I'm quite serious. I've very very rarely met anyone who liked the character of Scrappy Doo, and yet not only did they force him into the Scooby Doo cartoon like a square peg in a round hole, but they went on to make those bizarre short cartoons of just Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy...
He's a character I can imagine being placed into a more adult show to try to get the kids watching...but Scooby Doo was a kids show to begin with!!
I just wondered if anyone ever saw an official explanation (or even apology!!!) for him.

Scooby was such a wuss (but a funny wuss), so they brought in Scrappy who is a proactive type of character, with a Type-A personality trapped in a little dog body. I don't loathe Scrappy Doo at all. He does inject some energy into the mix.

I always thought Scrappy was created for the exact same reasons we had Oliver on the Brady Bunch, Sam on Diff'rent Strokes and Nicky & Alex on Full House(to name a few). It was because the ratings were slipping and the execs figured a new "cute" kid would draw viewers back to the shows.

OK, I stand by my earlier bashing but still have a new point I forgot to make- I noticed the later Hanna-Barbera cartoons had more TALKING than the older ones, biggest example being Tom and Jerry- the original cartoons had almost no dialogue at all as Tom and Jerry didn't talk, but in the later ones made for TV they always had someone following them around that gabbed through the whole thing. So I think Scrappy was brought in to make up for Scooby's inability to speak (at least coherently.) Still gotta watch the French and Spanish dubs on the Original Mysteries DVD... (Yes, I bought it even though I've always hated the show!)

I love that Cartoon Network airs the orignal Scooby Doo with spanish alternate audio tracks. It is a trip, that is for sure. I don't know why, but it is mesmerizing to watch.

What was the Simpsons episode where they added a third character to the slumping "Itchy and Scratchy Show" (as voiced by Homer)? And, to make it more fun, they added another character to the Simpson family at the same time, making the point from above that with slumping ratings, a new character to the mix will perk things up!

If anybody saw the Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law episode with Scooby Doo, it ended with Scrappy Doo saying "puppy power" then being grabbed and taken away by Avenger with everybody else laughing.

I clapped, I hated that character.

Also Eddie Izzard talks about Scooby and Shaggy being two of the most important characters in American literature in his Dressed To Kill act. "The rest of people in the van, F**K OFF!" "Scrappy Doo, a Magnum. BANG!"

I think the decision to add Scrappy Doo is on a par with whichever executive meeting produced a statement along the lines of 'I know, let's add another character to this revived Star Trek - what about giving Dr Crusher a teenage son?'.

And why is it that Scooby's sister, Ruby, and her son, Scrappy, could both speak half-way normal and none of the other Doos could? (Scooby-Dum was better than most of his relatives, but still had that cornpone accent and the predilection for saying "Dum-dum-dum-dum!")

"Only two things are infinite––the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not so sure about the universe." ––Albert Einstein